Mirrored Man: The Rob Tyler Chronicles Book 1 (32 page)

Is this Rob Tyler or am I running with
the clone?
The question gnawed at her, and she needed an
answer. Settling back in her seat, she made a conscious effort to
control her breathing. After a few uncomfortable moments, she
cleared her throat and asked, “Are you alright?”

“Yeah, now that we’re stopped.” He smiled
disarmingly. Now that she was calm, he felt a strange sense of
familiarity with this woman that he didn't know.

It wasn't exactly the answer that she was
looking for. “Are you hurt?”

“My shoulder's killin’ me, but—” He paused.
His embarrassment was evident. “Do we know each other?”

I don’t know, do we?
She wasn’t sure
how to respond, but decided to proceed with caution. “Yes. Of
course we know each other.”

Rob looked at her skeptically. “How?”

“We work together.”

“Work together? Where?”

Let's not get ahead of ourselves
.
“We're colleagues. Friends,” she assured him.

“We're friends?” he asked with an apologetic
shrug.

June nodded. “What's the last thing you
remember?”

His boyish smile disappeared.
Does she
know more than she's letting on?

“Do you remember the crash?” she asked.

An image of the Blackhawk, its blade nearly
slicing him in two when it hit the ground and rolled on to its
side, popped into his mind. “Yes.”

June smiled. “What about Walsh? Do you
remember Benny Walsh?”

Rob thought of his conversation with Sack.
“Walsh told Sack that I was leaving.”

June's expression went from a hopeful grin
to a confused frown. “Sack?”

“My observer, big guy, mustache, poor
attitude.”

June leaned back against the door. She had
no idea who Rob talking about, so she waited.

Seeing her reaction, he asked, “Where am I?
Where's Sack?”

What if this is the clone and it has
disjointed memories of Rob's life?
She remained silent.

His demeanor changed in an instant. “Where
am I?” He asked forcefully.

“Georgia,” she answered as calmly as she
could.

“Georgia?” If they were in the small eastern
European country, that would explain his surroundings.
Had
something else gone wrong during the extraction? Were we forced to
improvise?
Trying to make sense of it only made him more
confused. “What happened? Why didn't we go back to Tajikistan? How
long was I out?”

June's eyes went wide in confusion. She had
no idea how to respond.

“What happened? Where's Sack?” His
frustration was growing.

June’s mind raced. She feared that if this
was the clone, the side affect might have manifested itself here in
some unexpected way.

Unsatisfied with her silence, Rob hefted the
pistol to his chest menacingly. “Look, lady—”

June wasn't impressed. She decided that it
might be best to lay it all out on the table. “I think that we’d
better compare notes,” she said, looking intently at him. “My name
is Doctor June Phillips.”

She spent the next thirty minutes explaining
all that had happened since the two met, from the cloning project
to all of the details that she could remember of their
conversations, even those about his wife and family. Rob listened
intently to the tale, asking a question here and there to clarify.
But for the most part he remained silent. He knew none of the
people that she mentioned except his wife and Benny, and knew
nothing about any experiment. One detail disturbed him, though,
more than all the rest. She told him that he had kids, a boy and a
girl. Twins, in fact. But he had no memory of them whatsoever.

“So, what's the last thing you remember?”
she asked again.

“The last thing that I remember before being
in this car was being in a firefight in Afghanistan.”

“Afghanistan. You never told me anything
about Afghanistan.”

“Well, don't feel bad. It was a secret. But
that's the last thing I remember. We were being picked up by the
chopper—” He stopped. “You said we're colleagues. Are you in the
military?” He eyed her suspiciously.

“No, but I work for the government.”

“What's your security clearance?”

She thought about it, but she honestly
couldn't remember. “Um … it's like, classified, I think.”

“It's, like, classified,
you think
?
What are you, like, a valley girl?” He used a rather derogatory
term from the eighties.

“What?” she asked, not understanding the
reference. But that was the least of her concerns. She needed to
get a feel for who he was and how much memory he had. “What year is
it?”

He was put off guard with that one.
“What?”

“Just answer the question, please.”

“Two thousand one.”

June’s eyes widened. “Two thousand one?”

Rob smiled. “Why? What year is it in your
world?”

“So George W. Bush is president.”

He gave her sideways look. “Uh huh.”

“And nine eleven?”

He frowned. “Nine eleven?”

“September eleventh?”

That, he recognized. “What's my birthday got
to do with anything?”

It was her turn to frown. “Your
birthday?”

“Yeah. September eleventh is my
birthday.”

“And that's all?”

His frown returned. He was tired of the
senseless questions. “Yes, that's all.” He sighed heavily. It was
time for her to start doing some answering. “You said that we're in
Georgia. The state, right?”

“Yes.”

“And, that there's a military base around
here somewhere?”

“Yeah, but I don't know where.” She stopped
listening to him and started thinking. She was encouraged that he
had memories from as far back as 2001. From all that she had been
told, she would expect the clone to have memories from the week
before Rob's scan at best, but definitely not from nine years ago.
However, the prospect of him having moderate-to-severe memory loss
could prove equally devastating to their current situation.
There has to be a way to determine if this is Rob or the
clone.
And then she remembered the cut on his hand from the
accident with a paring knife the day before the scan. “Let me see
your hand.”

Rob was taken aback. “What?”

“Your left hand. Let me see it,” she
demanded as she turned on the overhead light.

“I asked you a question,” he said in
annoyance.

“Let me see it!” she snapped, gritting her
teeth.

Not really understanding why, he held out
his hand.

Turning it so she could see the base of his
thumb, she grinned.
There it is!
A wave of relief washed
over her. She leaned in and grabbed him around his neck, drawing
him into a hug. “Oh, Rob! Praise Jesus! It
is
you.” She
was ecstatic.

Rob was thoroughly confused. He awkwardly
returned the hug, patting her on the back. “Who were you expecting?
And what’s so special about my hand?” All he could see was a small
sutured cut that he had no idea how he had gotten. He looked at her
smiling warmly back at him. He still couldn't confirm anything she
had told him, but he couldn't ignore the evidence of his own
senses. There was no doubt he wasn't in Afghanistan. And there was
another strange detail in her story. She referred to Benny as a
captain. The man he knew was a lieutenant commander.

“Tell me about this captain.”

“About what happened tonight?”

“Yeah. What was his name?”

“Walsh. Benny Walsh.”

The name hit home. He knew Benny Walsh.
How could she possibly know him?
“And you said he was a
captain?”

“Yes.”

Rob quickly did the math. He hadn't seen
Benny in some time, but he couldn’t have made captain in such a
short span. “Well, I know Benny, but I know him as a lieutenant
commander. What did you say happened to him?”

June's expression changed to a combination
of fear, sadness, and horror. As she covered her mouth with her
hand, tears started streaming again. “He killed him. He shot him in
the head. I saw—”

Rob held up his hand to silence her. “Who
killed him?” he asked, not wanting to believe her.

She sniffed and wiped her face with her
mud-covered sleeve, smudging her cheek. “I don't know. He was
wearing a poncho. I couldn't see him. I've seen death before, but
never that close.”

“Think,” he pressed.

“The only person in the truck who had a
poncho on was the Air Force security guy.” She tried desperately to
recall his name, but it escaped her. Unlike the other security
personnel, he had never entered the lab. She had only met him once,
when he had arrived. She shook her head.

Rob's thoughts were beginning to lose what
little cohesion they had. “You said that there's a base close
by.”

Taking the hint, June started the SUV.
“Yeah, but the sergeant … he’s in the Air Force. What if—”

Rob held up his hand again to silence her.
“What if it’s the Air Force that’s trying to kill us?”

Rob had paid little attention to the truck
they were in up to this point. But when the dash lights came on, he
noticed the screen at its center. At first he thought it was part
of the stereo system, but as he studied it he noticed a compass
with the letters GPS below it. He stiffened. “We better go,
now!”

“Okay,” June said tentatively, not
understanding his sudden urgency.

He pointed to the screen. “That’s a global
positioning system?”

“Good idea! You can search for someplace for
us to go while I drive.”

What June didn't think about was that GPS
devices hadn't become popular until recently. They weren’t widely
used in early 2001, the time that Rob was apparently living in.

“Bad idea.”

She shot him a confused look. “How
come?”

“Because if we have a GPS device, then
whoever
might have the ability to track us.”

As if entering on cue, the sound of a
speeding vehicle, followed by a
screech
, shattered the still
of the night. A black SUV slid to a stop on the road barely 500
feet away.

The hairs on the back of Rob's neck stood
up. “We’re in danger.”

They watched in fascination as the vehicle
wheeled around, headlights pointed in their direction, as its
driver ignored the road and came barreling over the curbs, shrubs,
and anything else in its path. The GMC ripped up gravel and turf
alike as it careened toward them.

THE BLACKHAWK HELICOPTER
had been
buzzing the scene of the crash for nearly ten minutes with its
spotlight illuminating both the truck and the woods to the north.
But Eddie was hardly aware of any of it as he squatted next to the
body of Captain Benny Walsh. Holding up the mud-caked sheet that
Officer Kelly Mueller had used to cover Benny's lifeless form, all
Eddie could think about was the face of Special Agent Jo Turner.
His partner and friend of five years was dead, and at the moment
that was all he cared about. After several long minutes of staring
at nothing, Eddie’s eyes at last turned to focus on the body before
him. Benny was dead, and he was not the victim of some senseless
accident like Jo was. This man that Eddie barely knew lay in the
mud, undignified and discarded like refuse, the victim of an
unknown assailant, loose somewhere in the woods of Houston County,
Georgia. Benny had been murdered in cold blood.

Like most of the others, Eddie had been
briefly knocked unconscious when the truck overturned. He had
awoken battered and bruised, and bloody from a cut above his right
eye. As he had gone about checking the others for signs of life, he
had discovered Jo's body. He had also discovered that three of the
truck’s other occupants were missing. June Phillips, Sergeant
Covington, and either Commander Rob Tyler
or
his clone were
nowhere to be seen.

After happening on the scene and finding
Benny's body, Kelly’s first order of business had been to secure
Greg Mathers, who was wandering aimlessly about the area, to the
truck with handcuffs until he could sort things out. Next, he had
found Eddie climbing out of the trailer.

When Kelly started asking questions, Eddie
had immediately identified himself as a federal agent and, upon
verification, had taken over the scene. He’d had Greg released so
that he could attend to the injured, and then had ordered the other
deputies that Kelly had radioed for to close more than 16 miles of
Highway 96, from Highway 247 to Interstate 16. He had then
requested assistance from General Stillman and the Air Force to
secure the crash site. When the base commander dispatched her
personnel to deal with the situation, she had angrily assured Eddie
that she would be personally overseeing the disaster.

Eddie squatted there, staring at the body
without uttering a word until Kelly asked, “Special Agent, are you
alright?”

Eddie heard the question, but he honestly
didn’t know how to answer.

“Are you okay, Special Agent?” Kelly
repeated.

Eddie stood without speaking and looked past
the deputy. He saw Jimmy Bennett cradling his left arm and Don Cook
clutching his right side. Both had been injured in the crash. They
were still in their scrubs, leaning against a patrol car, and they
both had the same look of confusion and disbelief on their
faces.

Kelly accepted the fact that Eddie wasn't
going to answer, so he gestured to the captain’s body. “Did you
know him? Was he a friend?”

Eddie considered the question as he looked
back at Benny's body. He had gotten to know the captain about as
well as coworkers could in the nearly three weeks they had been
together, but he couldn't call Benny Walsh a friend. In fact, at
the moment he felt no more emotion for this man than he did for any
of the victims whose untimely demise he had investigated. “Not
really.”

“Well, I'm sorry anyway.”